Conventional wheelchairs, strollers or like vehicular systems has given people the ability to move around independently without the aid of others. We often see elderly and handicapped people commonly use manual and electrical wheelchairs to move around. Presently, these wheelchairs are only used for sitting and transportation without having any means of medical rehabilitation for maintaining and improving a user's health condition through physical exercise.
Millions of people worldwide suffer from weakness of lower limbs, also commonly known as “Paraplegia”, usually caused by stroke or spinal cord injury. Some people are paraplegic by birth. It is found that paraplegia takes a bigger toll in people who used to routinely exercise and then suddenly stopped exercising, in other words paraplegia is more common in people who are forced to be on the wheelchair due to some unfortunate events such as an accident or a stroke. Simulation of muscle impulses to drive blood flow in their limbs is the main problem of such disabled people.
In order to address this problem, a number of exercise machines have been proposed in the past to enable the disabled users to exercise. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,410,553 issued to Safford discloses a structure for rehabilitation of individuals suffering from paraplegia. The apparatus as disclosed in the patent comprises a base with four legs terminating in a circular girt for supporting the patient during rehabilitation. The disadvantage of this proposed device is that the user is required to enter and exit the proposed structure in order to exercise.
Some inventors proposed different other exercising devices, such as ergonomic stationary bicycles often used for medical exercises. Such bicycles include a braking system and a device indicating the effort made during exercise. Normally, a person is required to sit on the bicycle saddle holding on to a handle bar and exercises his/her limbs using two pedals. Such bicycles are preferably suitable to people who can move without any assisting devices and who can sit on the bicycle saddle.
Those people who cannot stand on their own or sit on the bicycle saddle, such as the majority of disabled people or people with acute paraplegia, are unable to use such exercising devices.
There have been many other exercise devices proposed for attachment to the wheelchairs to enable exercising by the user of the wheelchair. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,824,132, 2,630,332, 4,572,501. Such prior art devices are devised to enable the users of the wheelchairs to exercise are difficult and time consuming to attach to the wheelchair. Those devices require considerable manual effort to both attach and remove the device from the frame of the wheelchairs.
Further, we have seen lots of disabled people undergo special exercise programs and physiotherapy in various hospitals or rehabilitation centers. Such treatments at many times prove to be costly and time consuming as one has to take on number of treatment sessions and such treatments can last for months with no improvements.
Thus, in the light of above mentioned background, it is desired to have a comfortable to use exercising device for the disabled people, especially for the people with paraplegia or like problem. The proposed invention provides a simulator system and method for exercising the limbs of users who are confined to the wheelchairs, the strollers or the like vehicular systems. The proposed invention provides a simulator system removably mountable on the conventional wheelchairs, or the like vehicular systems in order to enable the user confined to the wheelchair, or the like vehicular system to exercise.